


before you touched my lonesome skin

by yasaman



Category: Cloak & Dagger (TV 2018)
Genre: F/M, Holding Hands, Post-Season/Series 02, Road Trips, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:54:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21777115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yasaman/pseuds/yasaman
Summary: “You know, when I was imagining our crime-solving, being heroes road trip, I was hoping for something a little cooler and more exciting than this,” said Tandy.She cast a significant look around their grim surroundings. The thrill of driving through the unfamiliar desert landscape had long since worn off, and now it was just boring, nothing but sand and rocks and scrubby little plants for miles and miles. Not that there was much thrill in any Greyhound bus trip.Tandy and Tyrone do some sleuthing and try to level up some more, with mixed results.
Relationships: Tandy Bowen/Tyrone Johnson
Comments: 22
Kudos: 99
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	before you touched my lonesome skin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cherylbombshells](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherylbombshells/gifts).



> Hope you enjoy this, cherylbombshells! I really enjoyed getting the chance to wallow in my Tandy/Tyrone feelings.
> 
> Title from Matt Berninger and Phoebe Bridgers' song "Walking on a String."

“You know, when I was imagining our crime-solving, being heroes road trip, I was hoping for something a little more exciting and cool,” said Tandy.

She cast a significant look around their grim surroundings. The thrill of driving through the unfamiliar desert landscape had long since worn off, and now it was just boring, nothing but sand and rocks and scrubby little plants for miles and miles. Not that there was much thrill in any Greyhound bus trip. With each rest stop they stopped at, the whole vibe only got more and more depressing, their fellow travelers more and more tired, as if no one actually wanted to reach their destination, and things seemed especially grim on this particular rest stop in the middle of nowhere. It was making Tandy wonder if Phoenix was hellish for more reasons than just its temperature.

“Hey, we figured out what happened to those dead girls in Abbeville. That was some cool hero stuff right there,” said Tyrone.

“True,” allowed Tandy. They’d been too late for those dead girls, but at least they’d given justice a kick in the ass by dropping the killer in Louisiana State PD’s lap. Literally, Tyrone had teleported in, dropped him in the middle of the cops’ bullpen, then teleported out. “But I gotta say, a Greyhound bus trip is no road trip.”

“We’re on a road, it’s a trip. It’s a road trip. It’s also, you know, within our almost non-existent budget.” Tandy sighed, and fought back a smile. That was Tyrone, always being _responsible_.

“It’s not too late to boost a car, is all I’m saying.”

Tyrone was tempted, Tandy could tell. His lips curved up into a smile and his eyes flashed with a brief spark of excitement. But then he put on his serious, no-fun face.

“We’re not stealing some random person’s car. What if they really need it? And what if we get caught?”

“That’s what insurance is for! Also, you could just poof us out of jail.” Another chiding look. Tandy sighed. Sometimes it was really inconvenient that Tyrone was basically the best person she’d ever met. “Fine. But if we catch someone being actively awful or evil or whatever, we should steal their car.”

“Sure,” said Tyrone. And there it was, the hint of bad boy that reassured Tandy she wasn’t just the devil on Tyrone’s saintly shoulder. “But then what about the gas money?”

Tandy sighed, her affection and exasperation turning into what probably looked like a pretty dumb smile. The bus driver honked, and everyone started drifting back towards the bus.

“You’re no fun.”

“We can have fun after we check out this Roxxon warehouse thing,” Tyrone told her as they got back on the bus.

“I know Mina thinks something sketchy is going on there, but I still say it might just be a totally normal workplace accident. People do die in normal, freak accidents sometimes, you know.”

“Normal freak accidents?” asked Tyrone with a grin, and Tandy punched him lightly in the arm.

“You know what I mean.”

Tyrone raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, I do, but are we giving Roxxon the benefit of the doubt now?”

“ _No_ , but you have to admit, the files Mina gave us don’t seem like anything other than an accident. It’s tragic, sure, but it really looks like the poor guy just got crushed by some falling equipment. What do _you_ think happened?”

“I don’t know, but it’s Roxxon," said Tyrone, shrugging. “There’s a pretty good chance they’re up to something in those warehouses. I’m not sure I buy that they’re getting into green energy. Or at least, I don’t buy that that’s all they’re doing.”

“Guess we’ll find out when we get to Phoenix.”

* * *

They arrived in Phoenix just as the sun was setting, and Tandy pretty immediately understood why people were in no hurry to shuffle off the bus. Even at the end of the day, the temperature was still stifling, and the blacktop concrete of the Greyhound station practically emanated heat, as if it were an enormous oven. A brief flash of homesickness hit her: who cared about all that _at least it’s a dry heat_ BS, she’d take New Orleans’ swampy, muggy heat any day.

“So, hostel or motel?” asked Tyrone.

If she pickpocketed a couple decent marks, they could probably upgrade to a hotel, thought Tandy, but she kept that suggestion to herself. She’d reserve the petty crime for if they really ran out of money.

“Motel,” she said. “We’re gonna want the privacy for our sleuthing.”

Tyrone pulled out his phone, presumably to search for a nearby motel, and after a minute of tapping and scrolling, angled his phone screen towards her. She rested her chin on his shoulder and looked at his phone.

“How about this one?” he asked. “It’s only a few blocks away.”

“Wi-fi, air conditioning, a pool…seems like all the most important things to me.”

But when they got there, the second Tandy saw the place, she broke out into a cold sweat, and she couldn’t seem to catch her breath.

“Not this one,” she said. “I’m sorry, but can we keep looking? I just—”

“Hey, you okay? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t—” she started, but then she stopped. She did know what was wrong. This motel had the same layout as the one Lia had trapped her in, the one where she’d nearly—where they’d—bile rose up in her throat. “Please, can we leave?”

Tyrone looked between her and the motel, and she didn’t know what he saw, what her face and voice were giving away, but he got it.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and wrapped his arm around her shoulders, the solid, real warmth of him about a million times better than just having his hoodie to wrap herself up in. “I should’ve thought of that. We’ll find somewhere that doesn’t look like that, okay? Even if we have to stay at an expensive hotel.”

“Ty, no—”

He gave her a squeeze, and despite herself, she leaned into him. “Hey, it’s worth it, okay?” he said, his lips close to her ear, the nearness making her shiver. It only made him pull her closer, like he thought she needed the comfort, and she did, but what she _wanted_ —she stopped that thought in its tracks.

“Nothing fancy,” she insisted. “Just—anywhere that doesn’t look like that.”

So after some more searching on their phones, they hopped on yet another bus and ended up at a boxy Best Western hotel near the airport. Staying at a Best Western wasn’t exactly living the high life, but at least it didn’t look a damn thing like the motel. It was all utterly generic and totally bland, and just now, Tandy found it weirdly comforting to know that the interior of this hotel looked exactly the same as probably hundreds of other hotels, all of them hosting people on business trips and families on budget vacations. The seediest, worst thing that probably happened in a place like this was people meeting up to have an affair.

Even if the Best Western was far from the Ritz, it cost more than they should probably spend. Maybe they could find some drug dealer to pickpocket, she thought grimly, running the numbers in her head.

“We’re gonna have to get one room,” Tandy said. “The cheapest one they have.”

“Pretty sure that’s gonna be a single.”

Tandy shrugged. “I don’t mind sharing a bed if you don’t. The king beds in these places are always huge anyway.”

Plus, Tyrone was always a perfect gentleman with her. _Unfortunately_ , said a small, bad decisions voice in her head, and she shut it up viciously. Tandy had fucked up a lot, was probably going to keep fucking up in new and exciting ways, but god help her, she didn’t ever intend to fuck up what she had with Tyrone.

Tyrone, thankfully unaware of Tandy’s little internal tussle with her worse impulses, nodded, biting on his lower lip. “Alright. Sure. Just as long as you don’t snore.”

“Ladies don’t _snore_ , Tyrone,” she told him haughtily. “We just sniff, a little, in our sleep.”

“Uh huh. So what you’re saying is, I should get ear plugs.”

She shoved at him, and he grinned down at her, bumping up close against her again, until she took his arm.

“Come on, let’s go inside and get a room.”

* * *

When they booked the room, the front desk receptionist was friendly but sharp-eyed.

“We’ve got a single available, sure. How many nights are you staying for?”

“Three,” said Tandy, before Tyrone could answer.

Partly because she hoped this would be an open and shut mystery, case closed in three days, but also because three seemed like a nice, safe number to avoid being asked any questions. She didn’t want anyone thinking she and Tyrone were teenage runaways. Sure, it was true, but it wasn’t the whole truth.

“Sure thing,” said the receptionist as Tyrone handed over enough cash to cover their stay. “Checkout’s at noon, and we’ve got free continental breakfast. Let me just get you your keycards…what brings you two to Phoenix, anyway?”

Tandy was ready with a safe lie, but to her surprise, Tyrone beat her to it, smiling politely at the receptionist. “Just visiting some friends at ASU.”

“Well, you two have a nice stay!”

* * *

_I don’t mind sharing a bed_ , she’d said. _The beds in these places are always huge_ , she’d told Tyrone. God, Tandy was an idiot. She realized that now that she was actually in that bed, trying to sleep with Tyrone in the totally non-sexy, literally sleeping way.

Because yeah, maybe the bed was plenty big, but there was no hotel bed big enough to keep her from obsessing over Tyrone, and how he was simultaneously too close and not close enough. She was still on edge, maybe, from seeing that dumb motel earlier. That bad decisions voice in her head was a little too loud just now. It wasn’t like she hadn’t spent plenty of time being even closer to Tyrone. Just—not in a bed.

She wanted him to hold her, was the thing. Nothing else, nothing more—or, if she wanted more, she could ignore it. What she really wanted was to be close, together. And in the light of day, when they weren’t sharing a goddamn bed, that felt totally normal, a totally cool, totally chill BFF thing because Tyrone gave good hugs, and sometimes Tandy liked the reassurance of knowing they could touch each other now, without worrying about their powers freaking out. But at night, in the dark, sharing a bed? Yeah, no, it wasn’t a BFF thing. It was a something more thing.

Would they drift together in their sleep? Would they wake up holding hands, the way they had so many years ago, on that beach? The questions made her toss back and forth, but carefully, so as not to wake Tyrone.

“Tandy? You awake?” murmured Tyrone.

“Yeah,” she said, and then Tyrone touched her shoulder, light and fast.

She turned over to face him, his eyes bare glimmers in the dark of the room.

“You still thinking of that motel?”

Her heart did a thing, an aching kind of thing that felt good and bad all at once.

“A little,” she admitted, and Tyrone scooted closer to her on the bed. It made her breath catch in her throat, made tears and want well up there until she swallowed them both down.

“Sorry,” he said. “What can I do to help?”

 _It’s not like that_ , she wanted to say, but it kind of was. Because when Tyrone had been in the bathroom earlier, and Tandy had been sitting on the bed, for a minute it had been like being right back in that motel, hopeless and terrified, waiting for something terrible to happen, waiting for something to be taken from her that she’d never get back. But then, just like back in that motel, Tyrone had come in, and the world had made sense again.

She stretched her hand across the covers, and Tyrone took it, waffles style of course, without even having to ask.

“Can you just talk to me, for a bit? About anything?”

“Sure,” said Tyrone, and she caught the gleam of his smile, small but real. “You sure you don’t wanna qualify that anything though? Because otherwise I’m gonna be talking about basketball.”

Tandy laughed, feeling lighter already. “That’s fine. You’ll bore me to sleep, it’ll be perfect,” she teased, and Tyrone groaned.

But then he did talk to her. About basketball, yeah, a bunch of stuff about college teams and March Madness and it was all pretty damned boring to her. But Tandy didn’t care. She just listened to Tyrone’s voice, the gentle rise and fall of it. He had such a nice voice, she thought. There was something almost musical to it, something in its gentle rhythm, or its sweetness. It followed her into sleep, along with the steady grip of his hand in hers, into soft dreams wrapped up in caressing, inky smoke.

* * *

The next day, they headed to Roxxon’s warehouses. There were three of them, clustered together in a grim, flat industrial park, the morning sun already beating down harsh and hot on all the concrete. The unforgiving light did the industrial park no favors, but Tandy supposed it made sense: Roxxon claimed to be storing and shipping solar panels and solar batteries here, and maybe they were. The oil had to run out sometime, after all, and sunlight was basically forever.

There was a group interview scheduled for jobs in the warehouses, and it was enough of an in for Tandy and Tyrone to get a look around. They probably wouldn’t get a chance to do any real snooping, but Tyrone figured they could at least get the lay of the land, ask around about anything suspicious. Tandy was less optimistic.

“You know, this ‘interview’ is probably just going to be them sticking everyone in some conference room to take some bullshit test or fill out some forms. We’re not gonna be able to see anything.”

“Maybe,” allowed Tyrone. “But maybe we’ll get lucky. And there’s always the old ‘I got lost on the way to the bathroom’ trick to get a look around the warehouse.”

“Yeah, and maybe we’ll at least spot some OSHA violations we can report,” she said, without any real conviction, and Tyrone rolled his eyes before he gave her a friendly bump with his shoulder.

She almost reached for his hand, on some instinct or habit she couldn’t afford to indulge. Not here, not now. Tyrone knew, somehow, because he glanced over at her with the beginnings of a soft smile, letting his fingers brush against hers for a moment. Tandy could have sworn she felt it, the light inside of her surging and tingling in her fingers, eager to meet Tyrone’s soft dark, and then they were almost inside the warehouse. She clenched her fingers into a fist. _Now is not the time for this, whatever the hell this is_.

* * *

Tandy ended up being proven right: the “interview” consisted of watching an informational video about the wonders of Roxxon, filling out a form, and taking an “aptitude” test that was all about how well you’d toe the company line. Typical minimum wage job bullshit. It always seemed like the less a job paid, the more bullshit was involved in even getting hired. And people wondered why she’d turned to a life of crime. At least the interview also included a warehouse tour, so it wasn’t a total loss. Best of all, the warehouse tour gave them a look at a conspicuously off-limits part of the warehouse, one with a fuck-off huge steel door secured by what looked like a pretty complicated security system, with a lot of AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY and SAFETY GEAR REQUIRED BEYOND THIS POINT signs plastered around.

“What’s in there?” Tandy asked their tour guide, who smiled wide and insincere.

“Oh, just some products that are in development. Trade secrets and all, gotta be kept under lock and key, you understand. Your positions wouldn’t involve that area at all.”

She shared a look with Tyrone. If Roxxon was up to something shady here, that was definitely where it was happening. The tour continued, and Tandy shifted her attention to the employees working on the warehouse floor. Everyone looked the normal amount of miserable and tired, or productive in an apathetic kind of way. No one seemed obviously traumatized by the recent grisly death of one of their coworkers.

“Oh hey, I didn’t know places actually had those signs for real,” said Tyrone, in a perky tone that had Tandy struggling not to stare at him in surprise. “ _24 days since our last workplace accident_ ,” he read.

24 days. Raul Trujillo had died 24 days ago.

Their tour guide didn’t say anything about that, of course. “We take workplace safety very seriously,” he said. “Now, the loading bays are back here…”

* * *

“You think we got the job?” asked Tandy once they left. “That test was pretty tough. Like, I’m pretty sure that multiple choice question about what you would do if you saw a safety violation was a trick.”

“Yeah, no, it was definitely a trick question,” said Tyrone. “They wanna know if you’ll narc on them to OSHA. But we’re coming back to sneak into that Authorized Personnel Only section, right?”

“Duh. We’ll come back during night shift, when there are fewer people around. You can teleport us past that huge door, right?”

“Probably,” agreed Tyrone. “You saw that sign though, didn’t you? 24 days since their last accident? They’re not keeping Raul Trujillo’s death a secret. Maybe it didn’t happen in the super secret part of the warehouse.”

“You have to admit, that’s a point for my it was a totally normal, terrible workplace accident theory,” said Tandy.

“Yeah, maybe. Guess we’ll find out.”

* * *

They had time to kill before the night shift at the warehouse started, and for once, Tandy was the one who wanted to be responsible.

“We should find somewhere to practice our powers, Ty.”

“Or we could go to the Science Center,” wheedled Tyrone, all big, pleading eyes and hopeful grin. Ugh, he was too cute. Still, Tandy was firm. She was being _responsible_ here.

“Your nerdiness is cute and all, but seriously, if there’s something going on here, we should make sure we’re ready to handle it. C’mon, we gotta practice.”

“We shouldn’t tire ourselves out before we actually need our powers,” countered Tyrone.

“Don’t think of it as tiring ourselves out, think of it as warming up. You did that before all of your basketball games, right? And I do it before I dance. So let’s warm up!”

“Yeah, okay,” said Tyrone with a sigh. “But if we don’t have to haul ass out of the city with cops on our tail, we should go to the Science Center after we’ve dealt with this Roxxon thing.”

“Deal!”

So they found a suitably abandoned space—the empty remains of some big box store that had gone out of business, totally easy to break into when your best friend could teleport—and got to work.

Tandy wanted to get better at making her balls of light, or at least get faster at it. It took precious time she didn’t always have to shape her light into a big enough ball, and she was sure she could get better at it. Tyrone was working on a new skill of his: going intangible, ghost-style, so he could walk right through walls or let bullets pass through him. Tandy was pretty damned invested in that last one. No way in hell was she ever going to watch him get shot in front of her again. Although, she thought, what if she could make a _shield_ out of her light, not just a sword…?

She tried to shape her ball of light into something flatter and more oval-shaped, but she only got as far as making her ball into a lopsided blob. It figured. Maybe a better person than Tandy would’ve manifested these powers as a shield in the first place. Instead, her light came out in daggers, sharp and piercing. She tried again, this time with a dagger in one hand, and a ball of light in the other, and she tried to focus: _just make the ball into plate, c’mon, that’s easy, start with a plate, then make it bigger—_ but it was like trying to pat her head and rub her stomach at the same time. The light in both her hands turned into long daggers.

“Damn it!” She let the daggers dissolve.

“What, what is it?” asked Tyrone, phasing back into solidity.

“Ugh, it’s nothing, sorry. It’s fine. I was just trying something. Maybe I need to level up more before I can make it work.”

“What were you trying?”

“To make a shield. I can make a sword now, right? A shield seems like it’d be helpful to go along with it.”

Tyrone smiled. “You’ll be a regular Joan of Arc before you know it,” he said, too soft to be teasing, more like he really believed it.

Tandy flushed, and was glad the dim light in the abandoned store would keep the color on her cheeks hidden. “Just don’t ever ask me to cut my hair that short. How's going full ghost feel like?”

“Weird,” he said, frowning now. “I keep worrying that I’m gonna be stuck like that.”

“Well, there’s a horrifying possibility I hadn’t considered.”

Tyrone grimaced. “Yeah. You ever worry about where all this is gonna leave us?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean—these powers. You talk about leveling up, like it’s always a good thing, but are our powers gonna get stronger, or worse, until we’re not—not quite human anymore?”

She wanted to give Tyrone an automatic, breezy reassurance: of course they’d stay human, of course their powers would never get too weird and wild for them to handle. But Tyrone could turn as intangible as a ghost now, and Tandy had her own personal flash bang grenade ready and waiting at all times. Plus there was the weird mental stuff, walking around inside people’s heads to poke at their hopes and fears. Tandy wanted to keep leveling up, wanted to get more control of these powers, but if that was going to make her unrecognizable to herself, if it would turn Tyrone into someone she didn’t know… What if their dark and light overtook them?

“Maybe they will,” said Tandy slowly. “But we’re a divine pair, aren’t we? We can always level each other out. Like—a balance.”

It was the right thing to say. The furrow of worry on Tyrone’s forehead smoothed out, and he smiled at her, sweet and bright. Tandy liked to think that particular smile of his was just for her. The smile on her own face right now was almost definitely the too-soft one that was just for Tyrone. Which was fine, she told herself, it was a totally normal best friend thing.

“Yeah,” said Tyrone. “Guess you’re right. Can’t have light without dark, after all.”

* * *

They went back to the warehouses well after dark. They staked the place out until shift change, watching for anything suspicious—weird shipments in or out, flashing lights, drug deals, anything—but everything was quiet and very boring. A couple security guards were on a haphazard sort of patrol, easy enough to avoid or get past.

“Okay, enough staking out.” Tandy affected a gruff, action movie star voice and said, “Time to bust this place wide open.”

Tyrone grinned, a flash almost as bright as her daggers in the darkness. “If that’s what you call teleporting in, sure,” he said, and offered her his hand.

The second she took his hand, there was a moment of soft, smokey darkness, and then they were in the warehouse. Tyrone kept up his cloak of shadows for a long moment, keeping them shrouded in darkness until they could be sure no one had spotted them.

“Neat trick,” whispered Tandy when he let it drop.

Tyrone shrugged, and made a brushing dirt off his shoulder gesture. “Just a little something something, no big deal.”

Tandy rolled her eyes, but she grinned too, and then they were both too busy checking out their surroundings to keep giving each other shit.

Tyrone had teleported them near the loading bays, in between two shipping containers, out of sight of any workers or security guards. The warehouse was more quiet than it had been during their tour earlier, probably lacking the full staffing of a day shift, but things were still active enough to cover up any sounds they made, and to ensure that a couple of extra people walking around wouldn’t be immediately suspicious.

“Looks like we’re all clear to me,” murmured Tyrone. He looked up then, squinting up against the bright lights in the rafters. “And I don’t think any of the security cameras have a good angle on us.”

Tandy nodded, then she bumped Tyrone’s hip with hers and jerked her head towards the shipping container they were standing next to.

“Think we should take a look inside? Make sure they’re shipping what they’re meant to be shipping?”

“Do it. I’ll keep watch.”

Tandy called up a dagger and cut out a hole big enough to let her slip into the container. Tyrone grabbed the metal she cut out before it could fall, and set it gently against the container. She called up a small, steady ball of light when she stepped inside, and looked around: boxes and crates that were labeled as solar panels and solar batteries. She opened one up, then another, and another, and yup, solar panels and solar batteries. Boring, and not at all nefarious. She took some photos, just in case, then she slipped back out of the storage container.

“Nothing. It’s just solar panels and batteries,” she told Tyrone, and they moved on.

They crept around the warehouse floor for about an hour, ducking in and out of sight of any employees, and didn’t find anything more suspicious than night shift workers slacking off on their phones. Tandy was starting to think Trujillo really had just died in an unfortunate forklift accident or something. This warehouse was boring, no signs of nefarious mad science or coverups anywhere. She checked the time: 3:15 AM. They probably needed to be out of here by the time the morning shift rolled in.

“Time to hit the top secret part of the warehouse?” asked Tyrone.

“Yeah. Think you can teleport past the door? We don’t know what’s in there, and there’s not a specific person for you to focus on. Or enough room or time for us to do the whole veve thing and get a more exact destination.”

While the door had opened once since they’d been in here, they hadn’t seen anything other than a quick glimpse of a hallway beyond it. For all they knew, they could poof into existence in the middle of a bunch of office cubicles, as people stared at them and called security.

“There’s gotta be at least a few feet of clearance. And I think ‘past the door’ is a specific enough destination. I’m just worried about cameras, or teleporting us right into the middle of a bunch of people.”

“You’ll just have to teleport us right back out if that happens.”

Tandy held out her hand, and Tyrone took it, intertwining their fingers. Waffles instead of pancakes, of course. It somehow felt safer. She got a dagger ready in her free hand, just in case.

“Alright. Let’s go then.”

The soft darkness took them the way it always did, but in the split-second of nothingness, Tandy felt a wrenching sensation, and Tyrone’s hand ripped away from hers. In the stretched-out slow time of panic, Tandy had a fraction of a second to consider all of the possibilities—the door was too thick for her and Tyrone to get past, he hadn’t been able to get their destination right, something had grabbed them in the darkness—before she was back in the real world again, in a grey blank hallway, still under the warehouse’s bright lights. She whirled around, trying to get her bearings, only to find that she was just on the other side of the door. But Tyrone wasn’t here with her.

“Tyrone? Ty! Are you here?” she whispered. She looked up and down the hallway: empty. She risked some more volume. “Tyrone! Can you hear me?”

Nothing. Only the distant hum and thrum of the warehouse’s machinery answered her.

Tandy fumbled for her phone, intending to call Tyrone, but her phone showed no bars. The cold burn of adrenaline pooled in her stomach in one heavy, icy lump, making it sink with fear. That was weird. She’d had a signal when she checked the time earlier, when she’d been literal feet away from her current position, and she knew the other warehouse employees’ phones had been working too, judging by all the covert texting she’d seen going on.

How the hell had she and Tyrone been separated? Was Tyrone hurt, was he stuck in that dark in-between place— _Think, Tandy_. Tyrone hadn’t let go of her, Tandy was sure of that. And she was pretty sure nothing had gone wrong with Tyrone’s power; by now, Tandy was used to how it felt when he teleported them, and everything had been totally normal. But _something_ had pulled him away from her.

If it was something in this warehouse, Tandy was going to find it, and introduce it to her daggers. Violently, if necessary.

* * *

As tempted as she was to just start kicking doors down while screaming Tyrone’s name, Tandy stuck with stealth. Well, as much stealth as she could manage, without Tyrone to shroud her in darkness or get her past locked doors. Which wasn’t much, to be honest. Most of the doors in the hallway were locked with biometric keypad locks, and the two doors that weren’t just led to a bathroom and a break room, both of them empty. No one who worked on top secret stuff had to work the night shift, Tandy supposed. It figured.

Maybe it was time to ditch stealth. She wasn’t Tyrone, she couldn’t summon shadows, she only had bright, uncompromising light to work with, and it was light she could only form into a weapon. How they’d each ended up with their specific powers, Tandy didn’t know, because by all rights, Tyrone was the one who should have been able to glow with light and hope, Tyrone was the one who should have been able to make a weapon out of his steady faith and goodness. For the hundredth time, Tandy wished their powers were swapped. Not that wishing was doing her much good right now. She had to actually _do_ something.

Tandy evaluated her options. She could bust open all the doors with her daggers, and search for Tyrone room by room. Who knew how far she’d get before she got caught. But if she didn’t even try searching, she’d get caught anyway, without ever knowing if she’d gotten close to finding Tyrone at all.

Unless…how much security could there even be in this place? Would Roxxon risk calling the cops into this potentially super sketchy, authorized personnel only part of the warehouse? How many people could they actually send after her, really?

Stealth wasn’t her strength, after all. However much she wished she’d gotten Tyrone’s powers instead, light was what she had, open and obvious and impossible to ignore, especially when it was stabbing you. So why not lean into it?

She summoned up a dagger, ready to jam it into the nearest biometric lock, but when she did, the dagger of light jerked in her hand, as if someone was tugging on it with a rope.

“What the hell…?”

The tug was even more pronounced once she loosened her grip on the dagger. Tandy let that dagger go out, and called up another one. Same thing. So she tried a ball of light next, and then things got really weird: the basketball-sized orb of light spun between her hands, gossamer thin strands of light peeling off it to slowly stretch down the hallway.

Okay…was this some really badly timed level up of her power? Except, wait—Tyrone had been pulled away from her while he’d been using his power. And now _her_ power was getting pulled by something. It couldn’t be a coincidence.

She let the ball of light die out, made another dagger, and followed the direction of its pull, down the hallway until it branched off into another hallway, quiet and empty. This whole part of the warehouse was quiet and empty, and it wasn’t like that should have been a total surprise; it was almost 4 AM, and it was entirely possible that only the warehouse’s main floor had a night shift. But the lack of people still seemed eerie, in comparison to the active warehouse beyond the big steel door, and it made Tandy’s mind jump to the worst conclusions about what Roxxon was up to in here. The anonymous, bland hallways, broken up only by a series of locked doors and room number plaques, seemed increasingly ominous the further she got.

At least, she told herself, this wasn’t going to be an oil rig explosion scenario, and kept following the tug of force on her dagger, getting stronger and stronger now, though Tandy herself didn’t feel anything comparable. Whatever this was, it was only acting on the light she summoned; her body only felt the pulse of her own fear and anger, the urge to run and shout until she found Tyrone.

When she finally heard a voice, she nearly screamed out of sheer surprise.

“Hey! You’re not supposed to be here!” called out the voice. Tandy froze, extinguished her dagger, and turned to face whoever had spoken.

A dark-haired woman was lurking in one of the doorways Tandy had passed just a few seconds ago, the door open now. The woman looked nervous and spooked, and didn’t seem willing to leave her office or whatever the room was. So Tandy took a risk.

Con was short for _confidence_ trick, after all. Most of the time, confidence was all it took. Tandy set all her fear aside, and held herself as straight and upright as if she was about to have a ballet recital.

“Neither are you,” she said, and the woman winced, looking around suspiciously.

“I’m just trying to get some work done early, before everyone else gets here, I’m behind deadline—” she rambled defensively, then narrowed her eyes. “Whatever, it’s none of your business! Does Dr. Prosser know you’re here?”

“Yup. Doc was the one who asked me to come in, actually. But, uh—I’ve gotten kinda turned around in here. Do you know what the right room is? Prosser doesn’t need to know I saw you.”

Tandy had no interest in running into the only other person here. She’d steer clear of wherever this Prosser was, and keep following the pull of her daggers until they led her to Tyrone, hopefully.

The woman narrowed her eyes, but her desire not to get caught outweighed her suspicion. “Room 24. And better you than me. I don’t know what the hell he’s up to in there, but it’s not making a more efficient solar battery, I’ll tell you that much. Um. Be careful, okay?”

She knew something, maybe something about how Raul Trujillo had died. But that wasn’t Tandy’s priority right now. She’d think about the case after she found Tyrone, safe and sound. She _had_ to find Tyrone safe and sound.

“Of course,” Tandy said with a smile, like this was all totally normal. “Good luck on your deadline.”

* * *

After just a couple more minutes of walking down yet another grim and gray hallway, the tug on her dagger became more of a yank, the pulling sensation strong enough to nearly make the dagger fly out of her hand. And of course, the pulling had led her right to Room 24.

If Dr. Prosser had Tyrone, or if Prosser was up to something that put Ty in danger, if he had ended up like Raul Trujillo— _focus, Tandy_. She checked her phone one last time, just in case she had signal now, but there was still nothing. _Fuck_.

Should she knock politely, or bust in? Knocking might give Prosser a chance to cover up whatever he was doing. So busting in it was. She got a firm grip on her dagger, bracing herself against the hard, steady force trying to pull it away from her, and slammed it into the keypad lock, making it spark and sputter. Destroying the keypad didn’t unlock the door, unfortunately, but that was okay. Tandy could just cut the whole damn knob and lock out of the door, and she did just that.

“Ty, are you in here?” she called out, and stepped inside.

She thought she heard his voice yell her name, as if from far away or muffled somehow, but she couldn’t see any sign of Tyrone in the lab? Workshop? Whatever, all Tandy could tell about the cramped and crowded space was that some kind of mad science was happening in here, and that Dr. Prosser was the mad scientist. Equipment with blinking lights and spinning meters was stacked all around the room, along with crates and boxes, and one big desk was shoved along one side of the room, its surface entirely taken up by monitors and keyboards and random looking junk. Prosser was typing away at the desk, his head pivoting back and forth between monitors that scrolled with fast-moving data that Tandy didn’t have a hope of understanding.

As much as Tandy wanted to get information out of the guy by dagger point, the thought of Ty stilled her hand. He’d want her to do this right. And maybe Dr. Prosser was like Mina, in over his head with whatever he was working on, but with good intentions.

Prosser was an average-looking, middle-aged white guy, so average that it was hard to point out any real distinguishing features. Average height, average build, hair in an average brownish color, and an average face that wasn’t ugly or handsome, just blandly forgettable. His eyes though...those weren’t average. The color was an unremarkable hazel, but they were definitely crazy eyes, feverish with intensity and urgency as they darted between screens. He hadn’t even looked up from his computer workstation, though he must have heard her come in.

“Dr. Prosser? I’m looking for my friend, Tyrone. Do you think you could help me find him?” she asked, totally polite and reasonable, because hey, maybe it’d work and she wouldn’t have to get stabby.

“Oh, he’s in there, ruining my experiment,” said Dr. Prosser, gesturing towards a door at the far end of the room. It didn’t look like any of the other doors in the warehouse: it looked like the kind of door you’d see in an underground bunker or submarine, or maybe a vault, with one of those huge wheel-lock things. “Don’t know how either of you even got in here, and I don’t care, but you’re throwing off my data. The zero matter singularity is growing unstable again. One wrong energy fluctuation and it will collapse in on itself. Can’t have that, not when I’m so close.”

“The what? Open this door, let Tyrone out—”

Prosser snorted, shaking his head. He still hadn’t even bothered to look at her. “Open the door? When I have a miniature black hole in there? I think not.”

“A _what_? Did you just say a _black hole_? Like, the things that eat stars? How is a door even supposed to—and Ty is in there! There are _dozens_ of people working in this warehouse!”

“It’s a _very small_ black hole, and with the zero matter it’s—why am I even trying to explain this to you,” said Prosser, _still_ not looking up from his work. Tandy was really starting to hate this guy. “Your friend is feeling some discomfort, at worst.”

“Yeah? The kind of discomfort Raul Trujillo felt, before he _died_?”

Prosser finally paused in his typing. “That was unfortunate. But it was only because the singularity grew briefly unstable and the gravitational forces—”

Tandy didn’t let him get started on some bullshit scientific ramble. Ty was in the same room as a _black hole_.

“Unstable, the way it is now? When my best friend is in there? Turn it off, get rid of it, whatever, before you suck all of Phoenix into that thing!”

“Turn it off,” Prosser scoffed. “As if that’s possible. No, I’m close to a breakthrough here. Roxxon just had this containment unit of zero matter boxed up in a storage facility, and it’s the key to renewable clean energy, I’m certain of it.”

Yeah, no, Tandy was done trying to reason with this guy. Tyrone was possibly getting sucked into a black hole while this nutjob was blabbing on about renewable energy. She called up a dagger that nearly flew out of her hand towards the locked door. Tandy gritted her teeth and gripped her dagger tight, and fought past the resistance to pull it and herself to where Prosser was sitting at his workstation. She brought the dagger to his throat, and was proud that her arm didn’t show the strain, the dagger steady and glowing against his pale skin.

“You either stop it, or you open that door to let my friend out. Those are your two options.” She pressed the dagger close enough to make blood well up on his skin. The blood was very, very red and dark against the brightness of her dagger. “I don’t think you’ll like the third option.”

“Well that’s interesting,” murmured Prosser, his eyes avid and not at all afraid as he peered down at the dagger at his own throat.

It was getting harder and harder to keep a grip on her dagger, and out of the corner of her eye, Tandy saw brightness building. Light, leaking out of her, the way darkness usually billowed out of Tyrone. Prosser squinted against the glare of it as an alarm started sounding.

“What is that?” demanded Tandy.

“The singularity, its energy is fluctuating—just, let me go, I’ll go in there, there’s a containment field I have to adjust—”

She wrenched her hand away from his throat, and tried to let her dagger sink back into her or disappear or whatever happened to one of her daggers when she let it dissolve, but the moment she let it go, it flew towards the locked door, sinking through the metal and disappearing. If Tyrone had disappeared too, if he’d ended up like poor Raul Trujillo—the steel door groaned, a dent starting to form in the middle of it.

That was not a good sign.

Tandy ran towards the door, and it was like she was running while being pushed by a strong wind behind her. She could feel some kind of force pulling on her—gravity, she supposed—and had to work hard to keep her feet under her.

“Tyrone! Can you hear me?” she yelled, and banged on the door. “Are you in there?”

“Tandy!” she heard, faintly, and her light flared out, streaming towards the door and Tyrone’s voice.

Tyrone was alive. For now, anyway.

Prosser joined her at the door then, and pushed her none too gently aside as he moved to open the door, turning the wheel-lock until it gave way with a screeching groan. The door slammed open like a hurricane-force gale had pushed it. Prosser staggered forwards and Tandy stumbled past him, looking for Tyrone. But when she went into the small room, she couldn’t see him. There was a small golf ball sized orb that was somehow simultaneously dark and glowing, and it was floating in the middle of the small room, surrounded by some sort of containment forcefield thing. Inky darkness was streaming towards it along with beams of Tandy’s light, but she still couldn’t see Tyrone anywhere.

“Ty? Are you here? Prosser, shut that thing down!”

“Tandy?” she heard, but _where was he_ —she couldn’t find him at the source of the roiling shadows, not with the way the little black hole was pulling all the shadows towards itself. “Tandy!”

And there he was, finally, right in front of her, but—not quite. Because Tyrone was flickering, see-through, like a ghost. _No, not like a ghost_ , she told herself viciously, like he was stuck mid-teleport. He was visibly intangible, and Tandy almost reached out to touch him, but her light turned him even more see-through, and she pulled her hand back. Would her light burn him into nothingness, like so much fog?

“Tyrone? Are you okay? What the hell happened?”

“I don’t know, I just got—pulled here, when I tried to teleport, and now I’m stuck! I can’t teleport out, Tandy, we gotta get out of here the old-fashioned way, and get everyone else out too.”

Tandy looked toward the little ball of luminous dark in the center of the room. She could feel it pulling on her, an insistent and strange sensation. Weird, to have a competing source of gravity trying to pull her from Earth’s jealous and steady hold.

“I think we have to get rid of that black hole, first,” she told Tyrone.

Tyrone shook his head. “How? This is _way_ above our pay grade, we gotta, I don’t know, call in the Avengers or something! I don’t know what to do with a black hole!”

“Well neither do I, but I don’t have the Avengers’ phone number, do you?”

“It’s just a tiny black hole!” shouted Prosser. “Call the Avengers in, psh. Don’t be ridiculous!”

Prosser was messing around with the containment field, doing who knew what, but it sure as hell didn’t look like he was trying to shut anything down. Tandy exchanged an incredulous, panicked look with Tyrone. Great, she and Tyrone were gonna get sucked into a mini black hole, and then this warehouse would be sucked in, and then Phoenix would too, all because this scientist thought it was _just a tiny black hole_.

 _Think, Tandy, think_. She didn’t have any kind of degree in physics, and Tyrone was right, this was so above their nonexistent pay grades that it was laughable. But they had to do _something_. What had Prosser said? _One wrong energy fluctuation, and it will collapse in on itself_.

So, okay, energy. They needed a source of energy. Tandy had enough physics knowledge to know that light was energy, and light was something she had plenty of. Hell, it was still pouring out of her right now. But what would happen when the little black hole collapsed in on itself? Would it take all of them with it?

“Prosser, are you adjusting that containment field? Or do we need to evacuate this warehouse?” asked Tyrone.

“Yes, yes, I almost have—” started Prosser, only he didn’t finish, because the containment field let out a loud, crackling fizz before it gave out, and then Prosser was screaming, and then he was gone. Tandy had been looking right at him, but he was gone, in an instant, nothing left of him.

“Did he just get eaten by a black hole?” asked Tyrone faintly.

“Yup. And we will be too if we don’t _do something_.”

The simultaneously glowing and dark black hole had gotten a little smaller after eating Prosser, but its pull had gotten stronger. Tandy was leaning back with all her weight, and she was still skidding towards it a little. Tyrone was better off than her, he wasn’t entirely solid yet, but even he was drifting closer to the thing, and the light and shadow pouring out of both of them were still being pulled in and around the black hole. In any other situation, it would have been almost pretty: the bright light and inky dark wrapping slowly around the void at the center of the room, as if there was a galaxy or nebula here, plucked out of outer space. Knowing what it was though, Tandy was just scared, and furious about it.

“Like what?” said Tyrone, starting to sound panicked, his usual deep voice turning high and young. “Maybe we should call Mina, maybe she’ll know something—” he continued, but Tandy wasn’t listening.

Fuck it, Tandy didn’t want them to be eaten by a black hole. She was going to try to do this her way. She’d have to be fast, probably—faster than she’d ever been when it came to doing this, faster than she maybe _could_ be, but it was all she could think of to do. And Tyrone’s life depended on it, not to mention her own.

She concentrated, tried her best to focus and gather back in some of the light streaming out of her. She visualized what she wanted a few times—a globe of light, fast, no, faster than that, bigger than that—until she was sure she had it, and then she turned imagining into doing. She formed a ball of light as quickly as she could, made it as big as she could, and let it fly away from the space between her hands into the black hole.

The ball of light stretched and slowed the closer it got to the little black hole, its form elongating, and Tandy had a few seconds to despair that all she’d done was feed the thing again, or worse, make it bigger. But then the black hole started wobbling and wavering, and with a flash of light and a weird popping sound, it was gone, collapsed in on itself. The sudden absence of its gravity knocked Tandy on her ass.

“Holy shit. You did it!”

“Yeah, guess I did,” said Tandy, breathless with relief. She gave herself a minute to catch her breath, and to watch the remnants of her light and Tyrone’s dark fade. It almost looked like a thunderstorm: Tyrone’s billowing clouds of darkness, and Tandy’s beams of light flickering in and around them. Even as she watched, the clouds of smoky dark poured back into Tyrone, and the light sank back into her.

“Alright?” Tyrone asked her, and maybe she was still dazzled by all that contrasting light and darkness, but she couldn’t quite make out the expression on his face, couldn’t figure out what it meant.

“I’m good,” she said, and scrambled back to her feet, towards the door, just in case the black hole blipped back into existence. “C’mon, we gotta get out of here.”

“We should make sure everyone in the warehouse evacuates, just in case,” said Tyrone, casting a wary glance backwards at the remains of the containment unit.

“Right, yeah. But first, we should take Prosser’s stuff.”

“Tandy!”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m not just being a klepto, Ty, we need to take his research. Roxxon can’t have this stuff, they can’t be trusted with it.”

Tandy surveyed Prosser’s workstation and thought about what to take. His backpack, definitely. The whole computer tower too? Yeah, fuck it, the whole computer. They could get the hard drive to Mina, and she’d know what to do with it from there.

“Here, take the computer tower and teleport out—”

“Um. I’d love to do that, Tandy, but I’m having a small problem here,” said Tyrone, his voice so carefully even and calm that it was worse than him sounding panicked. Tandy turned to look at him, and saw him waving his hand through one of the monitors on the workstation. “Kinda not, uh, really solid at the moment.”

“But the black hole’s gone,” Tandy said blankly. “You’re still stuck?”

Tyrone swallowed hard. “I’m, uh, scared to try teleporting right now. What if—what if I don’t come back? What if I get stuck in—that other place or dimension or whatever it is?”

“Okay. Change of plan,” said Tandy, and summoned up a long dagger. She threw it into the guts of the computer tower, making it spark, and hoped that would be enough to destroy the data. “Are you—are you feeling okay, does it hurt—”

“I feel fine, I feel normal,” Tyrone said slowly. “I’m just—not solid. Like I’m a ghost or something.”

The whites of his eyes were showing a little in his panic, but he was clearly trying to keep a lid on it, to stay calm. That was Tyrone for you: doing his best to be steady even when he was intangible.

“You’re not falling through the floor though. So you’re at least a little solid,” said Tandy, because that had to be a good sign, right?

Tyrone didn’t think so. His eyes got even wider, and he sunk into the floor a few inches. “Okay, well now that I’m thinking about it—!”

“Hey hey hey, you’re fine, you’re not gonna fall into the center of the earth, c’mon. Just think—think solid thoughts. Think about how things are supposed to be, focus on that. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and focus on being solid.”

Tyrone did, and thankfully, he at least got back on solid ground. He was still see-through though, and shadowed, darkness lingering around him, like part of him was still in that other dimension. What would happen if he teleported while he was like this? Maybe it would fix this, like his power was a switch that was stuck halfway, but maybe Tyrone was right to worry about getting stuck in the darkness.

“Okay, I’m thinking solid thoughts, is it helping?”

He opened his eyes, but he was still squinting in concentration. It was cute, made him look like a little kid again, and it would have been a heartwarming sight if only Tyrone wasn’t still mostly transparent.

“Kinda!” said Tandy with an encouraging smile. “Just keep focusing, Ty, concentrate on being totally in this dimension.”

“I’m trying,” Tyrone said, frowning. “But I don’t know if it’s helping much. I feel like I always do, apart from the, y’know, panic. I feel solid. I’m just—not.”

Tandy stepped closer to Tyrone, close enough that she had to tilt her head up a little to meet his eyes, and she tried not to look visibly terrified that she couldn’t feel the heat of his body. All the little things that told you you were standing close to someone weren’t there—the radiating heat, the faint, almost unconscious awareness of their breathing, the way their body displaced the air around it—instead, there was only a faint chill. It really was like standing next to a ghost. But Tyrone was alive, and he was real, he just wasn’t all the way here. Maybe Tandy needed to call Evita, ask her for help. Or maybe Tandy herself could fix this. At least she could try. It had worked with the black hole, hadn’t it?

She reached out to Tyrone. “Just take my hand. Be solid enough for that.”

Tyrone’s hand twitched, lifted up to meet hers, before he let it drop again, his jaw clenching.

“And what if it’s like it used to be? With us ending up blasted apart because of our powers. I don’t want you getting hurt, Tandy. And who knows where I’ll end up if our powers blow us apart.”

Tandy stepped even closer still, and it took all her willpower to keep from shivering. Ty needed hope just now. Tandy could give it to him.

“Not gonna happen,” she said, as calm and strong and sure as she could. “We’re way past that. We leveled up, remember?”

Tyrone swallowed hard, his big brown eyes fixed on hers for a long few seconds before they flickered down to her lips. Fear and triumph made Tandy’s stomach swoop. If that was what Tyrone wanted, if they could have that new closeness on top of their friendship, then Tandy could provide some real incentive to come back to the land of the tangible.

“You’re kinda glowing, did you know?” murmured Tyrone. Tandy could see it in the reflection of her in his pupils, a halo of light. “Like earlier, with the black hole. You looked like some kinda avenging angel, or a saint, all lit up.”

“You Catholic school boys and your saints,” said Tandy, shooting for teasing, but her voice wavered.

Tyrone’s lips quirked up in that half-smile of his that she loved so much, the inviting tilt of his mouth and the sly twinkle in his eyes. “I’m just saying, only thing missing was a sword, Joan of Arc.”

“Take my hand, Ty,” she said again, almost in a plea, and maybe it was just wishful thinking, but she thought she could feel the heat of his body now, the steady and true gravity of him.

Tyrone’s smile shifted to a grin, quick and nervous, and he asked, “Waffles or pancakes?”

“Your pick, just be solid again.”

He closed his eyes, forehead furrowing in concentration, and took her hand. At first, she just felt a weird fizzing sensation across her skin, almost like static electricity, then the fizzing faded, replaced with the warm and smooth skin of Tyrone’s hand, familiar and warm, his fingers intertwined with hers. Waffles, then. She held on as tightly as she could, and Tyrone breathed out a relieved laugh. He rested his forehead against hers.

“Solid enough for you?”

“Yeah,” she said.

They were so close together now. She could feel Tyrone’s breath on her skin. She grabbed his other hand too, just to keep him close. They could take a minute to just be, after the last hour and all its craziness.

“So, that was a scary few minutes,” said Tyrone.

“Definitely.”

“Had way too many minutes to think about the possibility of being stuck as some kinda shadow ghost thing. Which would’ve sucked. I mean, would I even have been able to eat?”

Tandy rolled her eyes. Yeah, the minute was over. “Okay, let’s not get carried away here,” she said, and started to pull away, but Tyrone held her fast, his eyes still fixed on her, intense and almost pleading.

“I probably should’ve been thinking of important stuff like that. But y’know what I kept thinking about?”

“What?”

“That I’d be stuck like that, without ever having kissed you.”

And then Tyrone closed what little space there was between them, and kissed her.

He kissed her soft and sweet, achingly gentle, like she was the sort of girl who deserved that kind of first kiss, or like this was a first kiss for real, innocent and happy, like grief and the world’s ugliness had never touched either of them. Tandy didn’t know what to do with a kiss like that. She wasn’t a soft and sweet kind of person. But Tyrone was and he deserved all her sweetness, all her desperate, bright gratitude for him and this moment. Was she glowing still? She had to be. If her light was hope, she was full of it right now, she was about to go supernova.

Tyrone pulled back, though Tandy squeezed his hands in a silent demand to keep him close. “Is this okay?” he asked.

“Better than okay. Kinda perfect, actually,” she said, and then Tyrone was smiling so big and bright it was like he was the one who was filled with light that beamed out of him.

Tandy kissed him again, deeper this time, until Tyrone kissed her back like kissing was a prayer to one of his saints, fervent and desperate.

Then the fire alarm went off.

Tandy looked over at the now actively smoking and on fire computer tower she’d stuck a dagger in earlier.

“Oops,” she said, and Tyrone laughed.

“C’mon, let’s get outta here,” he said, and pulled her close as shadows surged around them.

* * *

They lingered in the warehouse parking lot as dawn broke pink and pretty, and the whole warehouse was evacuated. Mostly they were waiting around just to make sure the whole warehouse didn’t get sucked into a black hole. Tyrone had teleported himself back in, just to check—and to grab Prosser’s stuff—but Prosser’s lab remained black hole free. There were some suspicious Roxxon types in bulky hazmat type suits marching into the warehouse though. Tandy wondered what else they’d find in Prosser’s lab. Not his notes, at least. His backpack had what was left of those, along with like ten smushed Cliff bars, his wallet, and his keys. Tandy was mostly just interested in the wallet and keys. One of the cars in this lot had to belong to Prosser…

“So, it turns out the Avengers have a tip line,” said Tyrone.

“Really?”

“Yeah. So we should call this in, probably. Someone should make sure Roxxon isn’t gonna just make more black holes.”

“Yeah, probably,” said Tandy, and pushed the buttons on the key fob until she saw a car’s lights flash. “So, this is definitely a car we can steal, right?” she asked, jogging over to it.

Tyrone followed, and he bit his lip and coasted a covetous hand over the car’s sleek, silver lines. Being a mad scientist for Roxxon must have paid the big bucks, to pay for a fancy sports car like this. Tandy wanted to drive it so bad.

“Feels kinda cold, to just steal a man’s car after we watched him get eaten by a black hole.”

“A black hole _he created_. Sucks for Prosser, but it was his own mad science that killed him. And that killed Raul Trujillo. That definitely counts as him being actively awful and evil. Plus it’s not like Prosser’s gonna need this car anymore.” Tandy draped herself over the car’s hood, and made big pleading eyes at Tyrone. “C’mon, Ty, you _know_ you want to drive this beauty.”

“Alright, okay, fine. C’mon, we should go before any cops show up.”

“Yes! Awesome, thank you,” she said, and hugged Tyrone, then kissed him too, because she could, now. “ _Now_ we’re on a real road trip.”

Tyrone grinned over at her. “Hell yeah, we are. Hey, you know where I always wanted to take a road trip to?”

“Where?”

“The Grand Canyon.”

“Then that’s where we’re going,” declared Tandy. They smiled at each other then, giddy and glowing. Tandy got in the driver’s seat. “Next stop, Grand Canyon.”


End file.
